![]() No two companies have exactly the same product mix and so inevitably none was impacted in exactly the same way as any other, but from a survey of their annual reports and press releases a number of macro-trends emerge. Both effects have been experienced during 2020. On the other hand, in instances where demand is down and your inventories are perishable, too much of the wrong inventory quickly becomes a liability. One of the benefits of a large inventory buffer, if of the right products, is that it allows you to absorb supply disruption and demand increases up to a point, and to this extent it is an asset. Median for our benchmark was 193 days, a bit more than 6 months. ![]() The big pharmaceutical manufacturers entered 2020 with substantial inventories, as we commented last year. So what has all this meant for inventories held by the big pharma companies themselves? How well provisioned were they going into the pandemic, what have the trends been during the year, and what does the situation look like now? The industry is very conscious of the life-saving or life-enhancing properties of its products and has well-devised strategies to avoid sudden shortages, including multiple sources of supply and, yes, inventories. And in the meantime, despite limited freight capacity, volatile demand patterns, restricted working practices and stockpiling in various parts of the supply chain, supply of other pharmaceutical products has continued more or less uninterrupted.įor anyone who has worked in pharma supply chain this should perhaps not be a surprise. Who would have thought, 12 months ago, that even one, let alone several vaccines to treat Covid would be developed, launched and being rolled out at speed by now? This has not happened without herculean efforts, not least on the part of the supply chain specialists who have helped make it possible. A number of localized issues notwithstanding, supply chain professionals across the world have done a great job of keeping essential medicines moving. It has been quite a year for the whole of the medical supply chain, but what, if anything, has the Covid-19 pandemic taught us about the inventories of the big pharmaceutical manufacturers? In this, our annual benchmark of big pharma inventories, we will have a look at what the data is telling us.īut before diving into the numbers, one thing is hopefully clear already: the global pharmaceutical supply chain has proven itself remarkably resilient over the past 12 months.
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